rosuto wrote:I, personally, would love for some of those jobs to be open in my area. Then I could get back to work, instead of being shot down at job after job.

While I sympathize with your employment problems, I feel you simply do not understand the gravity of the statements you have made in this thread. Namely, these statements (with emphasis added) are the most [edited] objectionable words I've ever seen posted on Dhamma Wheel:

rosuto wrote:... the placating of those whose very act of breathing breaks the law is beyond me. ... They chose to have a child here illegally.

To say a group of people breaks the law by their "very act of breathing" echoes the propoganda of a certain Vernichtungspolitik we know all too well. Why is it that you do not want undocumented immigrants to breath?

Likewise, the political position that a certain segment of the population should not be allowed to have children echoes a horrifying policy of forced sterilization that has been applied in many cultures in modern history, including in the United States.

The most current proposal for amnesty in U.S. immigration policy discussions is to offer illegal immigrants a chance to pay a fine or fee in order to apply for legal status, assuming the immigrants meet certain guidelines such as not being convicted felons. This is a far cry from offering free amnesty to anyone. Some people (such as yourself) are trying to twist the public debate in order to paint the current proposals as some kind of free amnesty for anyone. That's just dishonest.

Everybody agrees that U.S. immigration policy is broken and does not work. In some cases, the enforcement of U.S. immigration law can be likened to Sharia, a legal system in which the penalty can be inhumane. For example, under Sharia, a thief might have his hand cut off. Does the punishment fit the crime?

Likewise, the enforcement of U.S. immigration policy in some cases imposes enormously harsh penalties for relatively minor infractions. We are talking about children being separated from their parents, families split up, due to incorrect paperwork being filed with a bureaucracy. It's insane.

For your information, my wife was not a U.S. citizen when I met her. She was in the United States on a student visa and had no intention of staying. When we decided to get married, we saw an attorney. One option we had was to forget about marriage. The other option was to take our chances with U.S. immigration law. So my wife overstayed her student visa while we got married and filed the paperwork for her to become a permanent legal resident. It took more than five years.

During that time, there were periods when my wife was technically deportable. We also had a baby together after we were married, but before her permanent residency status was approved. During that time, technically the U.S. government could have ordered my wife to leave her U.S.-born child (my son) behind unless we all decided to leave the United States together. (That means two U.S. citizens would have to leave the country because the U.S. government would not allow the spouse of one U.S. citizen to stay.)

Fortunately we are educated people of means, so we had good legal representation. Today, my wife is a U.S. citizen. But understand this: There are plenty of real human beings out there with equally valid reasons to stay in the U.S., but because they lack education, because they lack money and legal counsel, they get deported. This is a class issue. Many of the "illegal immigrants" that so many middle-class Americans despise are working-class people who are "illegal" only because the U.S. immigration system is broken.

So when you say that some people "by their very act of breathing" are breaking the law, you are saying that my wife should not have been allowed to breath, because for a while (under the advice of legal counsel), she was undocumented. And when you say that some people should not have children, you are saying that I should not have my son. What my wife and I did to become a family was, in the end, legally acceptable to the U.S. government. We are lucky.

I personally know loving, caring "illegal immigrants" who pay taxes, contribute to society, are the parents of U.S. citizens, etc. You can find such people easily: For example, look to the farm fields where your food is grown. Throughout the United States, food growers have an economic stake in helping to enact a sane U.S. immigration policy. Fixing the U.S. immigration policy is a national-security issue if for the sole reason of securing a reliable supply of food. A significant portion of the U.S. economy is built on labor that, in virtually any other nation on Earth, would be legal. But somehow, the U.S. has messed up its immigration policy to such an extent that a huge portion of its labor pool is illegal. That's crazy.

Immigration cases are complex, and each family has its own story. I'm so saddened when I hear middle-class Americans lump all "illegal immigrants" into the same basket and label them all criminals. This attitude is so much full of greed, hate and delusion.

metta

edited: to fix broken coding, and restore a reference to the quotes that elicited this post.

Last edited by Jechbi on Thu Jul 09, 2009 4:09 am, edited 3 times in total.

Rain soddens what is kept wrapped up,But never soddens what is open;Uncover, then, what is concealed,Lest it be soddened by the rain.

Nevertheless, this does not adequately explain why some portions of my post were deleted by admin/mod action.

If a person in all seriousness states that:(1) It is illegal for a certain kind of person to breathe; and(2) It is illegal for a certain kind of person to have children;then those statements ought to be challenged in the strongest terms, in my opinion.

Those statements imply an utter rejection of the humanity of the individuals involved. During the Nazi era, statements like that were applied to the Jews. Here at Dhamma Wheel, they have now been applied to undocumented U.S. immigrants. It is for the person who made those statements to examine his own mindstate.

One thing that was deleted from my post: I feel that these two statements are the most objectionable statements ever posted on the Dhamma Wheel board. I used a different adjective than "objectionable" in my original post, and it did indeed relate to the teachings of lobha, dosa and moha. That is how I see these statements. I'm starting this related thread: viewtopic.php?f=16&t=1756

Since this thread has been hijacked by rosuto and twisted away from its intended purpose, I ask that it be closed.

Metta

Rain soddens what is kept wrapped up,But never soddens what is open;Uncover, then, what is concealed,Lest it be soddened by the rain.

You already have made several good points and as you can tell from my posts, I am in full agreement with you on this issue. But we can make our points without accusing another of possessing the mindstate of hate. We already have enough valid points on our side without resorting to that type of speech, often used by those on the other side of this issue.

Make points against the message, not the messenger, as the saying goes.